


Two Wings

by The_Exile



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Children, Domestic Fluff, Foreshadowing, Multi, Restaurants, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23817613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Aerith reminds him of who he is, what he's trying to achieve, while Tifa keeps him grounded in reality. He hopes he can find a way to change this world into something compatible with all three of them but he also knows fate isn't going to make it easy for him.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Tifa Lockhart/Sephiroth
Collections: Villain of My Own Story Exchange 2020





	Two Wings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meilan_Firaga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/gifts).



A bird needs two wings to fly straight and they'd been his for a long time now. 

One kept his eyes looking up at the sky for long enough to find his way, a beacon of light in a life that had spent too long in the dark; one offered him a sanctuary on the ground when he needed shelter from the storms that awaited him up there in his sky. 

One reminded him of who he was, in all the enormity of its consequences and his inevitable destiny, was maybe the only other person capable of understanding that side of him. One reminded him of how to be a more or less functional human being, on days when he'd forgotten that this side of him still existed at all.

The rather ironically named 'Seventh Heaven' had become a sanctuary of ordinary life, of hectic bustle, of customers yelling, waitresses and chefs constantly running in and out, some sort of Marlene-related incident seemingly every five seconds - a place where interruptions of any sort to the vital flow of the restaurant were banned, these days under threat of Sephiroth himself. As well as working security and being co-opted into joining the Marlene watch crew (he had no idea how small children were supposed to work or what exactly one did with them to stop them wrecking the place but she seemed to have become inexplicably attached to him, in the same way that cats did), he had started to make a name for himself as a musician. He wasn't particularly skilled - he had hardly practiced at all before now - but according to both of his partners, he had a way of making people feel calm and reassured, if he put his mind to it and, in Aerith's own words, 'quit it with the scowling and brooding all the time'. Sephiroth privately suspected that this psychological effect was a more benevolent, milder version of the telepathic abilities that Aerith had made him swear not to use except in an emergency, a clause which she had threatened to poison his coffee with white magic (it still had a bad effect on him) if he kept trying to look for elaborate loopholes with. 

When he wasn't needed at the restaurant, or had actively been thrown out, he usually went to help Aerith tend the flowers. Their beauty, fragile-looking but enduring and full of vibrant life, reminded him of her. Whenever he tried to tell her that, she would retort something along the lines of "Yes, and we're both determined to see that you develop at least some kind of healthy relationship with the planet's life energy!'. 

It was something he really wanted to do. Now there was something more at stake - his relationship with her - he refused to just accept that their worlds were simply incompatible, or that he would have to overwrite what was already there. Couldn't one world be as good as another - or couldn't they change this world into something entirely new, between them? They both possessed that sort of potential power, and it wasn't like this world didn't desperately need a nudge in the right direction if it wasn't going to stagnate and run dry. Of course, getting her actually interested in being anything but a flower seller in a rather unusual relationship was proving to be the most difficult part. At least she'd admitted that fate probably wouldn't wait for her, or agree to peacefully pass her by. The world just wasn't like that. 

More importantly, at least she trusted him that this was for both of them, for Tifa and the restaurant and their friends, even though he didn't really know their friends and felt uneasy around them. They shared his 'hobby' of passionately hating the ShinRa Electric Power Company, though, so that was something to bond over, even though he didn't feel comfortable telling them his exact reason to help them break into the company headquarters repeatedly.

**Author's Note:**

> not sure exactly where I'm going with this AU, hope it isn't too confusing


End file.
